Time for a Cyber-Weapons Convention

Cyber security expert Eugene Kaspersky has said that world governments need a cyber-weapons convention like those for chemical and nuclear arms.

Talking at the CeBIT Australia conference that started in Sydney today he said that social media manipulation was an emerging security threat, and predicted that democracy will be dead in two decades, unless citizens are provided with safe mechanisms to vote online.

Kaspersky mentioned the Stuxnet worm as an example of a cyber-weapon that was capable of damaging physical infrastructure. These modern weapons were “a thousand times cheaper” to develop than conventional bombs or missiles. He said that cyber weapons were the most dangerous innovation this century.